A chemical plant explosion in Sichuan Province and a factory fire in Shanghai Municipality yesterday have left ten dead, 21 injured and two missing. The same day, an investigation into a hotel fire in Guangdong Province earlier this month found the cause to have been an electrical fault.
Seven people were confirmed dead with eight others injured and two still unaccounted for after a detonator explosion at a chemical plant in Hongya County of Meishan City in Sichuan yesterday morning, local police said today.
Three of the eight wounded were seriously injured and remain hospitalized in the provincial capital of Chengdu. The blast leveled a row of bungalows and police are clearing up the site and searching for the two missing persons.
Preliminary investigations suggest the cause was an operational error while workers were fixing detonators, according to police sources. There were about 13,000 detonators when the accident took place.
The plant, Hongya Qingyijiang Chemical Co. Ltd., was built in 1996 to produce mirabilite, or Glauber's salt, in Hongchuan Township.
In Shanghai, three workers were killed and 13 others injured in a fire at a garment factory in Songjiang District, local police said.
The blaze started at around 4:00 AM yesterday in a dormitory of Linjianniao Garment Company, killing one at the scene and injuring 15 others, and was extinguished by 4:43 AM. Two of those wounded later died and the rest hospitalized.
The Shanghai Morning Post reported that the municipal fire department said the emergency exit had been locked and people did not know how to escape in the event of a fire.
"The boss of the factory locks the exit of the employees' dormitory every night against theft," said 21-year-old Huang Cuiping who was hospitalized. She jumped from a third floor window and sustained fractures to her thigh and lumbar vertebrae.
The factory boss's mother was killed on site by asphyxiation whilst trying to unlock the emergency exit, according to the newspaper.
Fire fighters said many workers know little about how to deal with a fire: "If they had climbed down by connecting and twisting bed sheets to ropes or catching the ropes thrown up by fire fighters, the consequences would not have been so serious," they told the paper.
Both incidents are being investigated further.
Also yesterday, the State Council investigation team into the hotel fire that claimed 31 lives in Shantou City, Guangdong on June 10 said it was caused by an electrical short circuit. They called rumors of arson "groundless."
The fire broke out at the city's Huanan Hotel at noon, engulfing the top three floors of the four-storey building. It took three hours to extinguish and left 21 injured.
The investigation report said it was caused by sparks from electrical wires on the ceiling of a second floor room that kindled combustible goods nearby.
The hotel is managed by a Hong Kong company.
(Xinhua News Agency, Shanghai Morning Post, June 21, 2005)
